Library, Union Agree On Contract Easton Workers Get 5-year Pact

Unionized employees of the Easton Area Public Library have a new five-year contract to replace one that expired at the end of June, according to library director Quentin deStreel.

Contacted last night by The Morning Call, deStreel said the library's board of trustees approved the agreement during a meeting Tuesday. He said the 33-member Easton Library School Service Association/Pennsylvania School Service Personnel Association had ratified the contract a few days before the board's vote.

"I can't give details until I have it in hand," deStreel said. "It is in the process of being typed up. It should be finished in the next few days."

He said, "There are retroactive provisions to the contract in part." But he said he could not comment further without having the contract before him.

"I'm glad it's been settled," deStreel said. "I think it is a contract that is fair to everybody." A representative for the Library Association could not be reached for comment last night.

Employees had been working under a day-to-day extension of their old three-year contract since it expired.

They had voted overwhelmingly on July 26 to give their negotiating committee the authority to call a strike when it felt all other options of resolving the impasse had failed, but that point was not reached. State Mediator Leonard Kern, Jr. entered the talks in June, and had forged a tentative agreement in late August. But that was rejected by the Library Association in a Sept. 3 vote.

Library workers had sought an increase in pay and had criticized the use of part-time workers to perform jobs for which they felt full-time employees should have been hired.

The average library employee had been paid $4.99 per hour under the old contract.